Whose Emotional Intelligence Counts? Behaviour, Competence and the Organisational Interpretation of Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has become a defining feature of leadership development, recruitment and performance management. We argue, however, that as EI has become embedded within organisational practice, its assessment has gradually shifted from recognising emotional capability to rewarding familiar patterns of emotional behaviour. This distinction has received little attention but has important implications for leadership, talent management and workplace inclusion. We argue that organisations may inadvertently privilege particular styles of emotional expression while overlooking equally effective, but different, ways of demonstrating emotional competence. Neurodivergence brings this distinction into particularly sharp focus, as emotional capability may be expressed in ways that differ from dominant organisational expectations. Rather than abandoning EI, we propose a broader interpretation of emotional capability that distinguishes underlying emotional understanding from its behavioural presentation, enabling organisations to recognise a wider range of emotionally intelligent leadership.